Wednesday, 17 May 2017

Pre Placement Musings

As I keep banging on about at every opportunity possible, in less than a week I'm going to be starting my year in industry as part of the sandwich aspect of my Fashion Communication and Promotion degree. Despite all the stories of fun and amazing experiences from students in the years above me on my course, I am absolutely filled with fear at the prospect of entering the fashion world, FOR REAL. I'm kinda hating past me for watching The Devil Wears Prada so many times because that film has definitely contributed to my perception of how scary and intimidating the experience might be. Despite this, a rational part of my brain knows that in reality it's not going to be a hell on earth experience and it will most likely be the best year of my life to date. I thought it would be nice to do a post before starting my placement year, and one in 12 months time when I've made it out the other side to see if my expectations were right and generally if my time interning turns out to be as terrifying as I'm anticipating. Here's hoping I look back at myself in a years time and wonder what I was making such a fuss about!

1. I'm terrified of getting lost. I'm not a pro at navigation during the best of times, and definitely not when in London. The concept of the tube is a truly baffling one to me so god knows how I'm going to survive for a whole year. Let's just hope I get used to my daily route and don't have to stray too far from that! CityMapper is going to become my most used app for sure, and in the past it's actually helped me out massively so here's hoping that continues. My memory when it comes to navigation and remembering the route I've taken is one of my strengths, so fingers crossed my ability to remember directions quite quickly will be of use!

2. I'm so unbelievably excited to be living in London for potentially a whole year! I cannot wait to immerse myself in all the free tourist fun I can possibly find and in general live out my dreams of being a London fashion gal (albeit a very poor one). One of my closest uni pals has secured a couple of placements in London too so I'm really happy to be able to begin our experience of interning together and hopefully it will bring a lot of adventures our way! I'm mega excited for brunch and Pimms in particular.

3. I'm really quite concerned about how many 'first days' I'm going to have throughout the year at the range of companies I'm going to be working at. The first day at any job is bound to be the most terrifying, so it fills me with dread that I'm going to have LOTS OF FIRST DAYS and have to live through the anxiety fuelled experience many times. Hopefully once my first placement is out of the way I will find a sense of confidence in my abilities and be able to accept that the experience is going to be a huge learning curve and that's okay! 4. I'm terrified of scary fashun people. What happens if I'm asked to assist someone and they're basically a fire breathing dragon and I'm tortured by the fact I have no idea who the mega famous people who I should definitely be aware of actually are. This is probably my biggest fear and definitely the one that's been caused by The Devil Wears Prada (remind me to never watch that film again). I know that again I'm being completely irrational and I'm sure most people that I'll work with will have been in my shoes once and be super willing to help me and give the best experience possible, but I do have little niggles of doubt in the back of my mind. Here's hoping I'm just v pessimistic. 5. And finally, I'm feeling a real sense of anticipation and excitement for what the whole experience is going to bring and the doors this could open for my future career! I'm definitely feeling on the cusp of tonnes of new opportunities and friends in this next chapter and I have such high hopes for what the experience is going to bring me. I can't wait to really appreciate this year in my degree and hopefully I'll go back to university in September 2018 with such a fresh perspective of the industry from my own first hand experiences! I'm going to aim to update my blog as much as possible throughout the whole experience and hopefully share some insight to the industry and life as an intern as well as to document this exciting chapter for myself! Like I said, I think it will be really valuable to look back at this post in a years time and hopefully be able to positively reflect on the experience and dismiss any negative perceptions I had at this point in time. I'm sure there will no doubt be negatives to my first step into the industry and challenges along the way but on the whole I'm hoping to overcome all my fears and anxieties and girl boss my way through the whole thing. Wish me luck peeps!